I would like to share with you a thought I've been very busy with lately. A thought about the significance of the audience in a performance. I have always believed in a phenomenon I call 'The Concert Miracle'. Maybe not always, but I think I remember it from sometime around when I was in High school. I remember my school orchestra conductor mentioning something about it, and I have never forgotten it. As the years go by I believe in it more and more- I believe in 'The Concert Miracle' so strongly, you could almost say that I count on it, that I trust it to happen every concert...
And what is this miracle? It is the miracle of the performer meeting their audience, and the way these two interact and affect each other.
It is easy to see how the performer affects their audience: the audience receives what the performer performs on the stage, they can see it, hear it, and hopefully feel it and think about what is happening on the stage, and how it affects them personally. We as performers put hours and hours of time in to finding the best ways to transform whatever it is that we want to share with our audience into the media that we are working with. I'd like to think that every performance, regardless of what kind of performance it is, is all about sending out a message to whoever is receiving it in the audience. Sometimes this message is one and strong, and sometimes it is soft and personal, but it is the goal of the performer to make the audience go through a process, and come out of the it just a bit different from how they walked in. Transfigured, you might say...
What is often not as easy to see is how the audience affects the performers. In my experience from being on stage I want to share how much the audience affects the performance, which is in my opinion no less but as much as the performers affect the audience. It is important to me to share this with you, since without all of you there is no performance!
While being on stage I can sense an energy coming from the mass of people sitting across from me, an energy that is unique and special to each performance. It is a combination of the different people which comply of the audience, the mood and set of mind each one of them are in at the specific moment of the performance, the weather, time and place, and of course of the performance as well. When we pour from the stage out to the seats, an energy comes shooting back which feeds us, and vice versa; when we get on the stage and this energy is in the air, that affects how the performance will start. I can not explain how I sense it, and why it happens- it is a miracle.
And this Miracle is a once-in-a-life-time experience, which will not live again outside of the memories of the ones who've shared it. It can not be captured in a recording, and it can not be duplicated. It is tragic in a way, how this special thing which was there and everyone could sense it is gone and lost forever. It is also wonderful in the sense that you have experienced a very special thing, which you have shared with the people around you.
'The Concert Miracle' is also the reason why 'A Far Cry' in concert is a totally different organism than the 'Rehearsal- A Far Cry'. Things suddenly come together. Suddenly there is only love between us, which can not be interrupted. Suddenly we are one unit which breaths and feels together, and we are free to do anything we want. When we go through the rough rehearsing period I hang on to my belief and know that in the concert, once we meet our audience, everything will be fine. Fine? no, everything will be... I don't have the right word to express this feeling that we share through the language of music. Something positive and wonderful, with a lot of love and honesty.
I am writing all of this in honor of our audience this past weekend, and of all the audiences around the world of the different arts whatever they may be. We need you, we feel you, and we want to thank you for being yourselves, because we do all of this only for you.
Much love,
Sharon
A Far Cry has collaborated with a handful of fabulous flute and piano soloists, but until this point, never have we worked with a string soloist from outside the band. It is such an incredible honor for me to have my mentor and teacher, Roger Tapping, joining us as viola soloist for Britten’s Lachrymae on this cycle.
Dear reader, Words and the Night is going to be absolutely amazing. Mozart opens the evening with the perfect aperitif: Divertimento #3. Beautiful operatic melodies, perfect structure and balance, and a great sense of humor provide the ideal backdrop for an elegant evening soiree. Suddenly, the mood shifts...a cloud passes in front of the moon with two songs from 16th-century master John Dowland lamenting loneliness and elusive love. These are the same songs that inspired Benjamin Britten in the early 20th century to compose Lachrymae, a haunting, gorgeous conversation with Dowland, featuring the incomparable Roger Tapping on viola. The cloud passes, though, and the party resumes with two motets from the 16th-century Italian Palestrina, who (although separated by centuries) speaks the same language as Mozart.
I spent 7 consecutive summers at the 